Orchard Flower (Version Bravo)
by Lubrican
Chapter : Prologue | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15
Chapter Eleven
"What's going on?" asked Jill, a little breathlessly, after her mother
and Zack were gone.
"I have no clue," I said.
"Oh Bob, I screwed things up so much," she moaned.
"Your heart was in the right place," I said.
"But he really IS a great guy, and I just know she'd love being around
him if she got to know him."
"Maybe that's what she's doing," I said. "Getting to know
him, I mean."
"Do you think so?" she asked hopefully.
"Let's just say for the sake of having reasonably comfortable holidays
... that I hope so," I said.
I didn't find out what went on during that tour until January, after
the kids had gone back to school. There were some clues, of
course, but I'll get to them later. For now, I'll just
describe it the way Lynne did when she told me about it while we were
sitting next to my wood stove one cold evening, working on a jigsaw
puzzle.
She said that once they got away from the house, Zack began apologizing
profusely. He claimed it was all his fault, and that he
talked Jill into inviting him home for the holidays.
"Is that so," Lynne said, her voice brittle.
"Yes Ma'am," said Zack emphatically.
"So how did she know all about the fact that you wanted to seduce me?"
asked Lynne.
"Um ... she didn't know," he tried.
"She told Bob that was the whole point to you coming here," said Lynne.
"Oh." He looked deflated. "It wasn't the whole
point," he added.
"Is that so," said Lynne again.
"Jill really did tell me a lot about you," he said. "I had a
girlfriend in high school. We were in love. I know
everybody says teenagers don't understand what love really is, and it
might be true, but we believed we were in love and it felt like love to
me. Anyway, she was riding around in a car with a bunch of
her girlfriends and they got hit by a truck and she was
killed. Nobody understood how I felt about that.
They said it was a tragedy, and sad, but that I'd get over it, and that
there would be other girls and all that stuff. But the
sadness I felt was bone deep. I knew it would never ever be
completely gone. I knew Jill's dad was gone and I could see
that same sadness in your eyes in that picture she showed me, and I
knew you'd felt the same thing I had felt." They walked on a
few steps. "Plus you are a stone fox, of course. I
can't deny recognizing that."
The juxtaposition between his heartfelt confession, and his boyish ...
boyishness ... was so stark as to cause Lynne to actually stop and
stare at him. She had been touched by the story of his girlfriend, only to be shocked by his blatant reference to Lynne as a
sexual being.
"I'm sorry!" he blurted again. He looked anguished.
"I always say the wrong thing when I'm around a woman I really like."
Lynne stood there, looking at him for a few seconds.
"How can you really like me?" she asked pointedly. "You only met me a
couple of hours ago."
He looked confused at first, and then thoughtful. He actually took the
question seriously.
"Well ... you're smart. You really are doing most of the
right things in managing your orchard, at least according to what I've
learned so far in my classes. And you're interesting and fun
to talk to. I love your laugh." He grinned weakly.
"Is that all?" She wasn't letting him off the hook.
"No," he answered. "But it's hard to explain. While
we were talking, you know, before lunch, you weren't talking to me like
most adults talk to somebody my age. And you for sure weren't
talking to me like most adult women have ever talked to me."
"What does that mean?" asked Lynne.
"You acted like you were really interested in what I was saying," he
said.
"I was," she said, surprised that he'd find that odd.
"Well most women wouldn't be that interested," he said. "And
besides that you're so ..." He trailed off, looking
uncomfortable again.
"So what?" asked Lynne.
"It wouldn't be polite to say it," he said guardedly. "I
really don't want you to be madder at me than you already are."
"I'll try to control myself," she said. "Out with
it. What am I?"
He seemed to argue with himself for some time before he
answered. "You really are a remarkably beautiful woman," he
finally said. "I can't explain why I think that. I
mean you're not beautiful like a model," he said artlessly, "but
there's something about you that just makes me want to ..."
He blushed and went silent again.
"Want to what, Zack?" she asked, her eyes boring into his.
"Oh man," he moaned.
"Come on, Zack," she wheedled, like she was talking to a five year
old. "Tell me what you want, Zack."
His eyes cleared. Suddenly his twenty years of world
experience told him something he hadn't paid attention to before this
moment. That was that this woman was toying with him ...
teasing him at a minimum ... and maybe even baiting him, at worst.
"You know what I want," he said, his voice suddenly deeper.
His eyes said clearly that he believed what he'd just said.
Lynne leaned back. The sudden change in his deportment from
shy, embarrassed young man, to confident young lion made her heart
flutter.
"You have to know that's how you affect a lot of men," he said, turning
the tables on her.
"I do not," she said defensively.
"Well you can take my word for it," he said. "Proof of that
is our admittedly silly plan to get me here so I could try to seduce
you. I really am sorry about that, and I sincerely
apologize. I just got carried away by hearing about you, and
by your picture. It's painfully obvious to me now that you're
a much higher quality woman than would fall for that kind of thing, and
you deserve better than that kind of lame treatment."
He didn't know it, but that was the exact moment that Lynne decided he
could stay for the rest of the holidays.
They did, in fact, tour the orchard, as well as the rest of the
farm. Zack's parents were dry land farmers in Nebraska on a
family farm much like that of Lynne's, in that it was smaller than the
mega corn operations around it, and they grew a variety of crops based
entirely, to Zack's chagrin, on the Old Farmer's
Almanac. He admitted, however, that they rarely
lost a crop and that his grandfather's and father's complete confidence
in the book was something he could not ignore. Nor could he ignore the
fact that they made a very comfortable living selling organically grown
produce. He was the first in the family to get any formal education in
agricultural techniques, and did so despite, rather than because of his
father's wishes. He already knew that his two older brothers
would take over the farm, and that his college education wouldn't
change that.
Of course I didn't know any of that at the time. While that was
going on I was alone with Jill, though I was pretty sure that wasn't
why Lynne had taken the boy off like that. In the past, every
time Jill got me alone she did something about it. But not
this time. She was too worried about what was going on
between her mother and Zack.
"What if she's grilling him about what I do at school?" she asked
anxiously.
"Do you do anything you don't want her to know about?" I asked back.
"Well no, but ..."
"So stop worrying. You wanted them to get to know each other.
I suspect that's happening."
"Yeah, but it's not like she's going to lose her head over him, like I
hoped would happen."
"You actually thought some young ... dude, for lack of a better term
... could come in here and sweep your mother off her feet?" I
looked at her like she was crazy.
"He's so smooth, and sweet!" she moaned. "I've seen him in
action."
"So he takes what he can get, wherever he can get it," I said grimly.
"No, he's not like that. He just loves to flirt, and when he
does that the girls just melt. He doesn't do anything about
it. He believes there should be a deep relationship before
there's any sex. Girls have offered, and he turned them down!"
"Did you offer?" I hated myself as soon as I said it.
She gave me a level stare. "No."
"I'm sorry," I said. "I shouldn't have said that."
"No, you shouldn't. That must be what Mom was talking about.
I'm fairly disgusted with you right now," she said darkly.
"So I guess making love is out of the question." I thought
that might get a smile, but I was wrong.
"You got that right, mister," she said, followed immediately
by: "When can we get married?"
Her change of subject, and the contrast between her mood and the
question left me speechless.
"I'm not waiting until I graduate from college," she said
firmly. "If we're going to be apart, I want to be married
while we do it so that when I get pregnant, there won't be any
difficulties about it."
"You're going to get pregnant?" I asked faintly.
"Of course I am!" she said in a voice that was less happy than I
thought a woman talking about such things should be. "We're
going to have at least three children. I was raised alone,
and that's not going to happen to my babies."
"But won't that interfere with your studies?" I asked. Do not
ask me why I brought that up. I have no idea.
"No," she said simply. "I have as long as it takes to get my
degree. I'm going to work in the orchard every summer until
I'm done, and then work there after I graduate too, so it doesn't
matter how long it takes. Besides, the way I figure
it, it could only cost me three years ... one for each baby.
I'm going to nurse, and I want them nice and healthy before I turn them
over to you while I go back to school."
You have to understand here that I was still off kilter, as far as
thinking rationally about this. My mind was still
grappling with the idea of having three babies around. I'd
been around one or two, but never for that long. Not that I
have anything against them. I just don't know what to do with
one. So my response was, again, less than stirring.
"I'm going to be the babysitter?" I asked.
"No, silly," she laughed. "You're going to be their father."
"Of course," I said.
"I don't think we can throw something together before I go back," she
said, frowning.
That was the point where age and experience gave me the edge.
"Not if you don't want to get on exactly the wrong side of the owner of
that orchard you were talking about. Mothers want the wedding
of their daughter to be a big deal."
"I know," she sighed. "But I don't care about it.
"I just want to be married to you."
I made yet another social and verbal gaffe.
"What brought all this marriage stuff on?" I asked.
She gave me another one of those ice cold, level stares.
"You asked me to," she said, clearly enunciating each word.
"Yes, but you didn't agree to do it then. What changed?" I
asked.
She walked up to me slowly and pressed the front of her body against
mine. Her hands went to loosely hold my waist.
"I got my period," she said softly.
I blinked several times.
"I beg your pardon?" I replied weakly.
"I started school, which took my mind off of you during the day, but
then at night I missed you so much I almost cried. And then
my period started, and I realized that all that yummy, creamy sperm you
gave me was wasted."
Her lips brushed mine.
"I realized I didn't want it to be wasted. If I had missed my
period, because you got me pregnant, at least a little part of you
would have been inside me all this time. I could talk to the
baby, when I couldn't talk to you, and hold it and pay attention to
eating right and all those things that you do for your baby's health
and well being. And I decided that, if I'm going to have your
babies, I might as well marry you too."
She did a little bump and grind, rubbing her loins against
mine, and smiled brilliantly.
"Plus I love you. Is that enough?"
She always had been way ahead of her biological age, so I shouldn't
have been surprised that she'd actually thought this out. And
she'd even told me she was going to.
We noodled for a while, kissing and rubbing against each other, but
didn't go further because we kept expecting Lynne and Zack to come back
any minute. As it turned out, we kissed and noodled for an
hour before we realized we'd had time to do whatever we
wanted. By then, of course, we were sure they'd be back any
minute.
Half an hour later, a panting Jill pushed me away.
"If we do this any longer I'm going to have to have some of that yummy
sperm I was talking about. I don't think they killed each
other, but we need to go find out for sure, don't you think?"
I watched Jill's jeans-clad bubble butt sway as she walked in front of
me. It was just sinking in that I would get to watch those
hips for years to come. I was imagining them naked, her bare
butt cheeks rising and falling, when she turned and held her hand out
to me.
"Why are you walking behind me? Come on!"
I thought about telling her what I'd just been thinking.
Instead I pulled, which made her waver, off balance, until my arms went
around her and stabilized her. I lifted a hand to one breast,
bare under the flannel shirt she was wearing.
"You drive me crazy," I said into her lips.
"Oh my," she sighed, with an exaggerated little-girl sigh.
"You're being very naughty! I told you we have to stop doing
that or I'll want to be naughty too."
"Remember the barn?" I asked, throatily.
"It's winter, Bob," she said, suddenly a rational adult.
"I know, but I can't help it."
"Good," she said. "I want you to be crazy for me.
Just not right this second. What if Mom is yelling at him or
something? I talked him into this. I feel
responsible for him."
"Maybe they're in the barn ... doing what we were doing."
"Yeah ... right. You just want to get me in there so you can
paw me."
"I'm pawing you right here," I pointed out, squeezing her breast.
"Well stop!" she said, neither touching my hand nor pulling away from
me. "You can paw me later." I let her go and she
took my hand again. "If you can behave, we'll check the barn."
"I'll promise anything to get you in the barn," I said solemnly.
She ignored my innuendo and pulled me along. Then she spoke
and I realized she hadn't ignored me.
"I want to suck you right now," she said conversationally. "I
want to feel you all the way in my throat, filling my tummy with yummy
warm sperm."
"I'm willing to help you with that!" I said eagerly.
"We're looking for my mother," she reminded me. "Maybe things
can still be salvaged."
Unknown to us, at least at that point in time, things had already been
salvaged, though I'm not sure that's how Lynne would have characterized
it. I'm not sure she realized what was happening to her as it
happened.
Zack had wanted to see the farm equipment so she took him to the barn
where the tractor, and picking bins and various other machinery was
stored. She knew it was old, and smaller than most farmers
used these days, but he didn't talk it down. Rather he
examined it closely.
"Somebody knows how to take good care of machinery," he said.
Lynne had been thinking about something he'd said a few minutes
past. He'd said something about their "silly plan
to seduce her." After his barely veiled admission
that he wanted her, she'd been unable to put it out of her
mind. Had she thought about it, she might have realized it
felt good to have a handsome young man acknowledge her desirability.
"How would you have gone about that?" she suddenly asked.
He stood up from where he'd been examining the tie rod ends on the
front of the tractor, something a lot of people let get into bad shape.
"Gone about what?" he asked.
She blushed. She hadn't meant to actually ask the question.
"Never mind," she said hastily.
"Gone about what?" he asked again, stepping closer to her.
"You made me answer a few minutes ago. It's only fair that
you abide by the same standard."
"You didn't really answer me," she said defensively.
"Did you know what I meant?"
She lowered her eyes. "Yes."
"OK, then. How would I have gone about what?"
She shifted from one foot to the other. "I was just curious
about how a boy ... young man ... would go about ... um ... seducing
..." She turned ninety degrees away from him, blushing
darkly. "You know ... these days," she finished.
"Oh that," he said carelessly. He said it so carelessly that
she turned back, staring at him.
"I could be wrong, of course, but when I studied your picture, you
looked like a woman who is very passionate."
"You studied my picture?" Her voice was higher than normal.
"For hours," he sighed.
"Hours?" Her voice went up even more.
"Guys have very vivid imaginations," he said. The fact that
he stopped there made it seem almost mysterious.
"Hours!" she whispered.
"I had this crazy notion that I could use that passion," he said.
"How?"
"Are you sure you really want to hear this?" he asked. "It
was a stupid idea."
"I'm just curious ... that's all," she said. "I mean it's
flattering - in a completely inappropriate manner of course - but it's
flattering. It's just been so long since I paid any attention
to that kind of thing - years, really - that I wondered what has changed since then."
The inner ends of his eyebrows dipped as he studied the woman facing
him. A few minutes ago she had been the adult, chastising a
boy. Now, though, that overriding confident maturity seemed
to have receded. It was almost as if she was just a woman,
and he was just a man.
"Well," he said slowly. "I wanted to get you to
laugh. I thought that might loosen you up a little.
I hoped to get to hold your hand on some pretext."
"Hold my hand?" Her voice was back up.
He reached for her right hand and laid it palm up in his left one.
"Yes," he said. He stroked her palm with one
finger. "Like this. Somebody told me that if you
stroke a woman's palm like this, that it acts like an erogenous zone."
Her shoulders twitched as a shiver ran through her body.
"And I probably would have done something stupid like kissing it," he
said.
He brought her hand to his lips and kissed her palm with lips that were
soft and warm. He let it back down, but didn't release
it. His thumb began going in circles around where he'd kissed.
"It's probably an old wives' tale," he said. "But
I'd have hoped it was true, and that it would have gotten you going so
that I could kiss you."
"Kiss me," she repeated.
"Yeah, I stared at your lips in that picture for a long time, wondering
what it would be like to kiss you. I know now that it was
really juvenile, but somehow I thought I'd be able to kiss you a few
dozen times, and you'd get all wild."
"Kiss me," she said again. Her voice sounded faint.
"Yeah," he laughed. "Like you'd ever want to kiss somebody
like me."
She suddenly jerked her hand out of his. She rubbed her palm,
where his thumb had been circling.
"It's not completely crazy," she said firmly. "With the right
girl ... I mean I suppose there are women who that would appeal to."
"I guess so," he said. "I don't know why, but I've always
been kind of attracted to women who have a little experience.
Girls my own age are so jerky about things."
"Jerky?"
"You know, they rush ahead and then slam on the brakes.
They're nervous and skittish about every new thing. But a
woman with a little more maturity has been there, and knows what to
expect. It lets a man pull out all the stops and concentrate
on ringing her bell."
Lynne frowned. "So you've seduced a lot of older women."
He grinned, his smile wide and his teeth white in the dim light.
"Nope," he admitted cheerfully. "I just believe it would be
that way."
"Oh," said Lynne, the frown going away. "So are you a ... um
..."
"Virgin?" he finished. "No. I guess not.
That's how I know that being with a younger girl is ... well let's just
say less than what it's sometimes hyped up to be."
"Maybe being with an older woman is less than it's hyped up to be too,"
suggested Lynne.
Zack's look seemed to penetrate her clothing with impunity.
"Maybe," he said softly. "But in your case I kind of doubt
it."
She swallowed reflexively. His gaze was so intense that she
almost felt it physically.
"Shall I go on?" he asked.
She looked around.
"Maybe later," she said. "I'm getting cold. I can
show you the rest of the operation tomorrow, if that's all right."
"I didn't know I'd be invited to stay," he said. "Under the
circumstances, I mean."
She seemed to shiver again. "Well ... I suppose we could call
it boys being boys. And though it was under false pretenses,
you were invited here. And it is too late in the day for me
to just kick you out. I suppose it wouldn't be the
end of the world if you stayed one night."
"Thank you," he said. "I promise, I'll be on my best
behavior."
Then, to her astonishment, he reached for her hand and brought it to
his lips again, this time on the reverse side, kissing the skin between
her second and third knuckles, European style.
It was right after that when Jill and I ran into them as they left the
barn, heading back to the warmth of the house.
Jill fluttered around like a nervous bird, asking what they'd been
doing, and where they'd been and if everything was all right.
Lynne finally said: "You're not out of the dog house yet, missy, but
Zack and I got things straightened out. He's staying the
night because I'm not the kind of hostess who would put somebody out in
the cold just because of a misunderstanding. So just simmer
down and act normal. All right?"
"Yes Ma'am," said Jill, subsiding into quiet. She glanced at
me with a worried look and I held out my hand. She took it
and fell in beside me, walking behind Lynne and
Zack. I looked at the jacket covering Lynne's backside and
couldn't help wondering if her bottom looked as alluring as her
daughter's.
That led me to think about the fact that there would be no pity fuck
for me from Lynne, because now I didn't need one.
And that was just fine with me.
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